Some Final Words on Mullin

You couldn’t ask for a more fun, enlightening interview than the one Scott Ostler, Matt Steinmetz and I had with Chris Mullin last week. We talked nothing but hoops — no politics — and he was relaxed, funny, revealing, the whole shot. He’s always been one of my favorite players (I still can’t believe he wasn’t a first-ballot Hall of Famer), and I walked away with even more admiration than before.

We’ve all been writing about Mullin this week, but I thought I’d throw in a few loose ends in the wake of his induction:

— We talked about the late Manute Bol, the man who labeled Mullin “Chalk.” What a treasure he was during his days with the Warriors. There’s never been a player quite like Manute, and he kept everyone loose around the team with his priceless sense of humor. Mullin called him “The Sudan Eddie Murphy.”

— I’ve collected basketball video for years, and I found some pretty cool dunks in my Mullin footage. There he is jamming over Alvin Robertson during a game in the 1992-93 season. He’s bringing down the house at St. John’s with a breakaway slam. And I found a clip showing Mullin, coming down the right baseline, elevating for a right-handed dunk over Phoenix’ Mark West. “Almost fell on my ass, too,” he recalled. “I think I got so high because he boosted me up and I got stuck on his leg. Sure, I remember it. I remember all my dunks.”

— Legendary shot for St. John’s against DePaul: He pulls up for an 15-foot jumper from the right side. In the air, he gets the ball knocked out of his hands. Still in the air, he grabs it back, tosses it in and gets fouled. Three-point play.

— From St. John’s teammate Ron Stewart, in an old Sports Illustrated article: “The way he does things with the ball, it’s like the game is on a string in his hand.”

— Over his first three seasons at St. John’s, his scoring average rose from 16.6 to 19.1 to 22.9, all the while taking barely 12 shots a game. He was too busy making similar gains in assists, blocks and rebounding.

— St. John’s teammate (and future pro) Bill Wennington, during their collegiate days: “Mo loves his ball. What else does he do? Well, nothin’. I mean, he goes out. But it’s not like he goes out and does anything that’ll get him arrested. That would jeopardize ball.”

— When Mullin threw in some crazy bank, with either hand, with just the right spin, in traffic, it was never an accident. “I practiced those trick shots,” he said. And nobody practiced quite as hard as Mullin.

— I asked him how it was that he became so revered by the African-American basketball community. How it was that he became…”One of their own?” he said, humbly, launching a discussion featured in Friday’s Sporting Green column.

— From Monday’s “Chronicle Live” interview with Greg Papa: “People don’t understand how good Mitch (Richmond) and Tim (Hardaway) really were. Richmond was the next level down from Michael Jordan as a two-guard, and that’s pretty good. Any night we weren’t playing Chicago, we had a huge advantage at that position. Hardaway . . . he was so good. You talk about Derrick Rose, Russell Westbrook, these great point guards in the league now, that was Tim Hardaway. He was unguardable. So quick, he would blow by his man at will. Get in the paint, shoot runners, off the glass, 3-pointers — and you talk about a guy with confidence? He would do all that and then let you know about it. Let the whole gym know about it.”

— On Warriors teammate Sarunas Marciulionis, out of Lithuania: “For a long time, guys from Europe were considered kind of soft. I think he was the first really fearless guy to make that move to the NBA. They talked about Drazen Petrovic and Arvidas Sabonis, and they were great, but Sarunas had tremendous game and he was extremely tough. Physically and mentally. He had to be, with Nellie (Don Nelson). Oh my God, Nellie rode him hard. Called him some of the worst stuff I ever heard, everything you could imagine. It’s a good thing that back then, Sarunas didn’t speak any English (laughter).”

— On consistently falling short against the Lakers, one of the greatest teams ever assembled: “People always say, ‘Oh, if you only had a big guy.’ Well, wait a minute — it’s Kareem, OK? What big guy? Who’s out there to match up with Kareem?”

— Not that Magic Johnson wasn’t impressed. “When God made a basketball player,” Magic said after one game against the Warriors, ” he just carved out Chris Mullin and said, ‘This is a player.'”

— In the final stats over eight games for the U.S. Olympic team in 1984, Mullin was second to Jordan in scoring, second to Robertson in steals, and third behind Leon Wood and Steve Alford in assists. And he only started one of those games.

— Playing for Bobby Knight on that team, he said, was “crazy. Bobby was crazy that summer. There was a lot of stuff going on, people threatening to leave, and I mean during the Olympics. Right there in L.A., our fourth game, Patrick Ewing was so upset with Bobby, he was going to quit the team.”

— I loved the crewcut. Mullin cut his hair that way to signify his sobriety, and the simplicity of it all, but that look was pure 1950s. He played that way, too, all about the fundamentals, the smart play, and making his teammates look good.

— Better yet: Imagine the vintage Mullin on the Knicks teams of the early 70s, the teams he idolized as a kid. Frazier, Bradley, Reed, DeBusschere, the textbook passing and teamwork . . . wow, would he have fit in there.

— After Mullin emerged from alcohol rehab in 1988, he and Warriors conditioning coach Mark Grabow went to Cal’s Harmon Gym for a workout. Mullin, who hadn’t touched a basketball in 30 days, set up at the free-throw line and made 91 straight.

— And finally, the great Lou Carnesecca, Mullin’s college coach: “We may not see another fella like this one for a long, long time. And I’ll tell you why: He didn’t just have the great talent, he worked harder than anybody else. Who knows? He might be taking a shot right now.”